Contents

Some Issues with this Page and Development Issues

This page grew out of two different methods, one create an activity
(find link http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Creating_an_activity ),
updated with the other wiki 'edit with form',
and will hopefully eventually merge into one style,
but when have some working code up on a server.

Some issues with development, as wiki.laptop.org
and Sugar Labs documentation is not exactly synchronized,
nor up to date. GITorious on git.sugarlabs.org for example,
you can create an account, but there is no help/
documentation on creating SSH keys to actually put
something up there... but OLPC has a http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_hosting
link to a WinBlows PUTTY based http://unixwiz.net/techtips/putty-openssh.html
so if you're not already programming, your SOL.
Sorry kids... Should be easier, IMO, for kids
and newbies to create stuff, but this is appearantly (sp?)
the MIT way, fall off the cliff...

And stuff has changed a bit from the original wiki.laptop.org
methods of creating an activity.

So in an environment that I'm currently using,
Fedora 11 64 bit (yeah, had a little money at one time,
but not any more, and it's not booting from USB,
nor virtualization chip support, so don't get me
started on needing new, working hardware...)

Have the Sugar desktop install from yum install sugar*
type stuff, or yumex, but then sugar-jhbuild environment
(the latest is not working, somewhere on metacity?)
and another older version that jhbuild is working,
all pointing to the same environment ~/Activity
files, with different sugar versions,
and the little example programs I got doing SOMETHING
is wx graphics not pygtk, nor pygame
so Sugar isn't liking it, SO FAR...

Hack, swear, hack, hack, learn,
mumble about python development tools,
(I'm old (45+) but started with Knuth before 16,
started with ALGOL, SAIL, MLAB, DEC-10, Fortran,
PASCAL, then Symbolics Lisp/ Common Lisp, CLOS,
much later Java for undergrad thesis project, etc)

And the 1 Gig is full, annoyed by all the Journal is Full,
delete stuff messages, but I rant...

Background

Basically, when done, or closer,
Type something and see it finger spelled in American Sign Language,(only one of the many manual sign languages).

The gory details:
During the ClassActs book sprint hosted at Gallaudet.edu (a federally funded deaf school) in September 2009, DancesWithCars got frustrated with remembering what little sign language he used decades before, and decided to create a manual American Sign Language Sugar Activity/ application alternative to Speak, which Deaf people would not hear. This could be used to teach some basic ASL finger spelling, such as your name, but will probably eventually need to know when someone is calling you names/ swear words in ASL (and any other culture, frankly).

Especially when the featured hearing speaker is late, and the angry mob of Deaf students/ administrators/ teachers get frustrated and want you (Moi???) to start without them, when visiting and not prepared, so give over to someone else who could stand to learn some ASL (hint, hint), but I look further like an idiot and unwelcome, so penance/ amends (not that I really did anything wrong), and another form of disability accommodation that UncleCrazy already knows a little about, but wasn't ready to jump up and say I'm disabled, as a different type and a little private (like hemmoroids, frankly, none of anyone else's business, as it's hidden/ invisible, until you get to know him, in a compressed sprint sleep deprived schedule, forcing writing on a time demand, to a dyslexic with depression and sleep issues, not to mention some other stuff)...

Contributors

Roadmap and future features

Dialects, beyond just ASL, as Sign Language is rather locale dependent, to say the least.

Rate of Signing: variable for learning, speed up later, like rate adjust on classic auditory Speak.

All sorts of other ideas as they appear.

Transitioning between letters,
how to properly position the hands (the notes in the wikipedia graphics clipped out),
and combining into things like Sign Names (Deaf community creates a new sign name for you
based on your characteristics, and part of your name, but I don't recall mine, if ever had one)...

Full sign language may be too difficult, so finger spelling is a start and will see where it goes from there.

So I'm considering it language learning, even if visual instead of auditory...